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South Asia Investor Review is focused on reporting, analyzing and discussing the economy and the financial markets of countries in South Asia, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. For investors looking to invest in emerging markets beyond BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), this blog is designed to help international investors looking to learn about investing in South Asia with focus on Pakistan. Riaz has another blog called Haq's Musings at http://www.riazhaq.com

Bangalore & Mumbai Cheaper Than Karachi

It costs less to live in Bangalore, India's high-tech capital, and Bombay, India's financial capital, than to live in Pakistan's megacity of Karachi, according to the 2016 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report. The survey says Karachi's cost of living index is 44 while Bangalore's is 42 and Mumbai's 43. The survey bases it on New York City's cost of living set at 100. Lusaka, Zambia, is the cheapest with cost of living index measured at 41.

The survey allows for city-to-city comparisons, but for the purpose of this report all cities are compared to a base city of New York, which has an index set at 100. The survey has been carried out for more than 30 years.

EIU ranks Singapore (index 116) as the world's most expensive city. It's followed by Zurich (114), Hong Kong (114), Geneva (108), Paris (107), London (101), New York (100), Seoul (99), Copenhagen (99) and Los Angeles (99). Three of the top 10 most expensive cities are in Asia, 5 in Europe and 2 in the United States, and none in Africa.

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Such intolerance exists at all price points. In a TV interview, Shabana Azmi, one of India’s most celebrated actresses and a former member of Parliament, described how she and her equally famous screenwriter husband couldn’t buy the flat they wanted because they were Muslim.

More alarming to me, though, is how the inter-communal mix of my formative years has been lost. As the writer Naresh Fernandes describes in his book, “City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay,” some suburban areas are acquiring the feel of religious ghettos. Mumbra, one of the largest, is over 90 percent Muslim. It suffers daily power failures much worse than those in neighboring Hindu localities. To the west, the clearly demarcated Muslim parts of Jogeshwari are snidely called “mini Pakistan” by Hindus across the “border.”

It is not difficult to find Internet listings specifying whether a property lies in the Hindu or Muslim area of an outer suburb, or even, in the case of a half-million dollar flat in the closer-in suburb Andheri, saying explicitly, “All communities allowed EXCEPT Muslims.”

Denmark topped the list in the first report, in 2012, and again in 2013, but it was displaced by Switzerland last year. In this year’s ranking, Denmark was back at No. 1, followed by Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. Most are fairly homogeneous nations with strong social safety nets.

At the bottom of the list of more than 150 countries was Burundi, where a violent political crisis broke out last year. Burundi was preceded by Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar. All of those nations are poor, and many have been destabilized by war, disease or both.

Of the world’s most populous nations, China came in at No. 83, India at No. 118, the United States at No. 13, Indonesia at No. 79, Brazil at No. 17, Pakistan at No. 92, Nigeria at No. 103, Bangladesh at No. 110, Russia at No. 56, Japan at No. 53 and Mexico at No. 21. The United States rose two spots, from No. 15 in 2015.

From 2005 to 2015, Greece saw the largest drop in happiness of any country, a reflection of the economic crisis that began there in 2007.

The happiness ranking was based on individual responses to a global poll conducted by Gallup. The poll included a question, known as the Cantril Ladder: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

The scholars found that three-quarters of the variation across countries could be explained by six variables: gross domestic product per capita (the rawest measure of a nation’s wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations).

The report was prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an international panel of social scientists that includes economists, psychologists and public health experts convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

Though the findings do not represent the formal views of the United Nations, the network is closely tied to the Sustainable Development Goals, which the organization adopted in September, aiming, among other things, to end poverty and hunger by 2030, while saving the planet from the most destructive effects of climate change.

The field of happiness research has grown in recent years, but there is significant disagreement about how to measure happiness. Some scholars find people’s subjective assessments of their well-being to be unreliable, and they prefer objective indicators like economic and health data. The scholars behind the World Happiness Report said they tried to take both types of data into account.

In a chapter of the report on the distribution of happiness around the world, three economists — John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia; Haifang Huang of the University of Alberta; and Shun Wang of the Korea Development Institute — argued against a widely held view that changes in people’s assessments of their lives are largely transitory. Under this view, people have a baseline level of contentment and rapidly adapt to changing circumstances.

The three economists noted research showing that people’s evaluations of their lives “differ significantly and systematically among countries”; that within countries, subgroups differ widely in their levels of happiness; that unemployment and major disabilities have lasting influences on well-being; and that the happiness of migrants approximates that of their new country, instead of their country of origin.

The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index: Rising Poverty and Social Inequality in India

In South Asia, Afghanistan has the highest level of destitution at 38%. This is followed by India at 28.5%. Bangladesh and Pakistan have much lower levels. The study placed Afghanistan as the poorest country in South Asia, followed by India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) 20 years ago. Now it has the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India.

Writing this week in India’s Deccan Herald, Prasenjit Chowdhury notes that according to two comparable surveys conducted in Bangladesh and India in 2006, in Bangladesh, 82% of children are fully immunised, 88% get vitamin A supplements and 89% are breastfed within an hour of birth. The corresponding figures for Indian children are below 50 per cent in all case and as low as 25%t for vitamin A supplementation.

Moreover, over half of the population in India practices open defecation, a major health hazard, compared with less than 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has overtaken India in terms of a wide range of basic social indicators, including life expectancy, child survival, enhanced immunisation rates, reduced fertility rates and particular schooling indicators.

What has gone wrong?

In recent times, India has experienced much publicised high levels of GDP growth. So what is going wrong? Amartya Sen and the World Bank’s chief economist Kaushik Basu have argued that the bulk of India’s aggregate growth is occurring through a disproportionate rise in the incomes at the upper end of the income ladder. To use Arundhati Roy’s term, the poor in India are the ‘ghosts of capitalism’: the ‘invisible’ and shoved-aside victims of a now rampant neoliberalism.

The ratio between the top and bottom 10% of wage distribution has doubled since the early 1990s, when India opened up it economy. According to the 2011 Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development report ‘Divided we stand’, this has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies. The poverty alleviation rate is no higher than it was 25 years ago. Up to 300,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997 due to economic distress and many more have quit farming.

Assets such as airports, seeds, ports and other infrastructure built up with public money or toil have been sold off into private hands.

Secretive Memorandums of Understanding have been signed between the government and resource extraction-related industries, which has led to 300,000 of the nation’s poorest people being driven from their lands in tribal areas and around 50,000 placed into ‘camps’. As a result, naxalites and insurgents are in violent conflict with the state across many of these areas.

Where have the benefits been accrued from the 8-9% year on year GDP growth in recent times?

Sit down and read the statistics. Then step outside and see the islands of wealth and privilege surrounded by the types of poverty and social deprivations catalogued by the MPI.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to neoliberalism in the early nineties. ‘High net worth individuals’ (ie the very rich) are the biggest culprits here. Crony capitalism and massive scams have become the norm. It is not too hard to see what is going wrong.

India’s social development has been sacrificed on the altar of greed and corruption for bulging Swiss accounts, and it has been stolen and put in the pockets of the country’s ruling class ‘wealth creators’ and the multinational vultures who long ago stopped circling and are now swooping.

A flyover under construction in the Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta) has collapsed, killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly 100.More are feared trapped under the concrete and steel bridge, and rescue efforts are continuing all night.Images show residents using their bare hands to help find victims.Safety issues such as lack of inspections and the use of substandard materials have plagued construction projects in the country.The accident took place in an area near Girish Park, one of Kolkata's most densely populated neighbourhoods, with narrow lanes, and shops and houses built close together.The 2km-long (1.2 mile) flyover had been under construction since 2009 and missed several deadlines for completion.The causes of the disaster were not immediately clear but the company in charge of the construction, IVRCL, said it would cooperate with investigators.

Today will be a case in point: after the couple land in Mumbai they will go straight to their first engagement, laying a wreath to the victims of the 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Palace Hotel, then move on to a slum to see the work of three children’s charities, before rounding off the day with a charity gala dinner to raise money for the same charities, where celebrity guests will include the “Queen of Bollywood”, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.Their slum visit this morning will transport them to a world which could barely be more different from the Duke and Duchess’s palatial home life.

Anmer Hall, the Duke and Duchess’s home in Norfolk, could comfortably be divided into more than 100 typical dwellings in the Baba Sheb Ambedkar Nagar slum, where Saniya lives, meaning the Grade II* listed property would be home to upwards of 500 people, rather than four. They also have a London home at Kensington Palace.

A crude comparison, perhaps, but one which has clearly crossed the minds of Saniya and other pupils at the slum’s Door Step school. Many of them start work at the age of seven gutting fish or scavenging rubbish dumps for £3 a day and drop in to the school in the evenings to learn how to read and write.

The school’s founder, Bina Sheth Lashkari, said: “We have shown the children pictures of the Duke and Duchess and where they live. The children know they are going to meet a Prince and Princess and they have asked if they are like the Princes and Princesses in fairy tales. One of the girls asked if the Princess had big hair, like Rapunzel.

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In 33C heat they will have to pick their way through the stray cats and dogs foraging scraps of food, avoid the opaque brown puddles in the beaten earth paths and the jumble of electrical wires at head height, before being shown into one of the shockingly tiny homes, smaller than a walk-in wardrobe.

Today will be a case in point: after the couple land in Mumbai they will go straight to their first engagement, laying a wreath to the victims of the 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Palace Hotel, then move on to a slum to see the work of three children’s charities, before rounding off the day with a charity gala dinner to raise money for the same charities, where celebrity guests will include the “Queen of Bollywood”, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.Their slum visit this morning will transport them to a world which could barely be more different from the Duke and Duchess’s palatial home life.

Anmer Hall, the Duke and Duchess’s home in Norfolk, could comfortably be divided into more than 100 typical dwellings in the Baba Sheb Ambedkar Nagar slum, where Saniya lives, meaning the Grade II* listed property would be home to upwards of 500 people, rather than four. They also have a London home at Kensington Palace.

A crude comparison, perhaps, but one which has clearly crossed the minds of Saniya and other pupils at the slum’s Door Step school. Many of them start work at the age of seven gutting fish or scavenging rubbish dumps for £3 a day and drop in to the school in the evenings to learn how to read and write.

The school’s founder, Bina Sheth Lashkari, said: “We have shown the children pictures of the Duke and Duchess and where they live. The children know they are going to meet a Prince and Princess and they have asked if they are like the Princes and Princesses in fairy tales. One of the girls asked if the Princess had big hair, like Rapunzel.

-----

In 33C heat they will have to pick their way through the stray cats and dogs foraging scraps of food, avoid the opaque brown puddles in the beaten earth paths and the jumble of electrical wires at head height, before being shown into one of the shockingly tiny homes, smaller than a walk-in wardrobe.

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The Lahore studio will be led by Ammar Zaeem, cofounder of Pakistan’s mobile game studio Caramel Tech which already has a team of 50 engineers.
The move is a big investment into Pakistan as a tech hub, and it shows how the game business is expanding around the globe.

Cloudcade:

Founded by Di Huang in 2013, Cloudcade is known for its popular multiplayer game "Shop Heroes" that pits players against each other in a competition to create the best shop they can. If a player can make a better store and perform more tasks than his or her rivals, he or she wins.

The game is available on the Apple iOS App Store, Google Play, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon, Kongregate, and Facebook. It is now also supported on the Apple Watch.

43.5% of Indians, the highest percentage in the world, say they do not want to have a neighbor of a different race, according to a Washington Post report based on World's Values Survey.

About Pakistan, the report says that "although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance – sectarian violence, its location in the least-tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices – only 6.5 percent of Pakistanis objected to a neighbor of a different race. This would appear to suggest Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than even the Germans or the Dutch".

Housing Discrimination:

It appears that there is a small but militant minority in Pakistan that is highly intolerant, but the vast majority of people are tolerant. My own experience as a former Karachi-ite is that there is little or no race or religion based housing segregation, the kind that is rampant in India where Muslims are not welcome in most Hindu-dominated neigh…

Pakistan's human development ranking plunged to 150 this year, down from 149 last year. It is worse than Bangladesh at 136, India at 130 and Nepal at 149. The decade of democracy under Pakistan People's Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) has produced the slowest annual growth rate in the last 30 years. The fastest growth in Pakistan human development was seen in 2000-2010, a decade dominated by President Musharraf's rule, according to the latest Human Development Report 2018.

Human Development in Pakistan:

UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) represents human progress in one indicator that combines information on people’s health, education and income.

Pakistan saw average annual HDI (Human Development Index) growth rate of 1.08% in 1990-2000, 1.57% in 2000-2010 and 0.95% in 2010-2017, according to Human Development Indices and Indicators 2018 Statistical Update. The fastest growth in Pakistan human development was seen in 2000-2010, a decade dominated by President M…

I am the Founder and President of PakAlumni Worldwide, a global social network for Pakistanis, South Asians and their friends. I also served as Chairman of the NEDians Convention 2007. In addition to being a South Asia watcher, an investor, business consultant and avid follower of the world financial markets, I have more than 25 years experience in the hi-tech industry. I have been on the faculties of Rutgers University and NED Engineering University and cofounded two high-tech startups, Cautella, Inc. and DynArray Corp and managed multi-million dollar P&Ls. I am a pioneer of the PC and mobile businesses and I have held senior management positions in hardware and software development of Intel’s microprocessor product line from 8086 to Pentium processors. My experience includes senior roles in marketing, engineering and business management. I was recognized as “Person of the Year” by PC Magazine for my contribution to 80386 program. I have an MS degree in Electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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